Clemson athletic director Graham Neff this week discussed how the school's $65 million renovation of Memorial Stadium will improve the fan experience on football game days.
The improvements include a new 127-foot wide, 56-foot tall video board that includes a state-of-the-art sound system and LED ribbons surround the stadium.
"The new video board, which is 5 (times) the size, lights, sound system and the theatrics of that, let alone Ring of Honor and the ribbons around it, it's been a long time coming," Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said Thursday according to SI.com. "The 10 years that the prior board was here served its useful life and it served the Valley great."
Neff said the board is the eight largest in the country, but given its proximity to fans, it will seem proportionally larger than other boards that sit farther away from the stands.
"That experience for all 80,000, we're really, really excited about," Neff said. "Louisiana Tech game Week Three will be an 8 o'clock game. It'll be even different and we feel really excited about 25 seconds from an entry standpoint and then some of the timeouts and fourth-quarter videos and things like that throughout the game."
When Clemson fans head to the stadium this weekend, they'll also get a look at The Master's Club, a premium, open-air seating section for Iptay members that's sold 633 of its 640 seats. While it also comes with a climate-controlled lounge, it's located below the WestZone on the concourse level and offers fans a premier view of the Hill.
Neff said the school has seen high demand for premium seating, but the school is also trying to re-imagine its game-day operations.
"We've actually reorganized some of our internal staffing from an administrative standpoint to align our operations and focus on marketing and getting promotions," Neff said. "Ultimately, fan experience and what that means from a facility standpoint physically, let alone just the game flow and scripting...we've taken steps internally to staff up and reorganize to have more intentionality around that."
According to SI.com, other improvements to Memorial Stadium and the game-day experience include:
- A new tiger statue has been placed at the entrance of Lot 5, where the players and coaches arrive for the pregame "Tiger Walk." Neff said there is now a pull-off portion for the team buses so that their drop-off doesn't interfere with traffic as much as in previous years.
- Lot 5 will receive a makeover after the season. It will get repaved and re-lotted with trees and other features being added. That will give "Tiger Walk" attendees a different experience for the 2023 season.
- The team locker rooms and player areas on the first floor of the WestZone will be remodeled next season.
- Clemson has significantly upgraded its sports medicine and recovery facility with "100 Yards of Wellness," which opened in the fall semester. The athletic department added a new physical therapy staff for all sports and invested in recovery and sports science.
- With Name, Image and Likeness becoming a critical part of college athletics. The latest Clemson project is an "athletics branding institute, which is really a recognition from a NIL standpoint of how we support and give space and creative opportunities and rentable spaces for our student-athletes to engage and really focus on NIL opportunities which is obviously incredibly important for our student-athletes here, let alone from how we create opportunities from a recruiting standpoint, etcetera," Neff said.
- Later this fall, Clemson will break ground on a women's sports expansion that includes rowing and new sports lacrosse and gymnastics. Most of the construction will occur during the winter.
